


The Ginormous Conglomeration of Johnlock Oneshots

by unicornpoe



Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: AU, Christmas, Established Sherlock Holmes/John Watson, Ficlets, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, Glitter Bombs, If you prompt me I'll love you forever, John is a teacher, Johnlock - Freeform, Kissing, M/M, Mrs. Hudson Ships It, Murder, Parent!lock, Prompt Fic, Rosie Is The Cutest Baby Ever, Secret Lovers, Sherlock Being Sherlock, Sherlock is an actor, Snogging, Tea, everyone ships it, short oneshots
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-07
Updated: 2018-02-02
Packaged: 2019-03-01 11:52:58
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 6
Words: 9,237
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13294302
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/unicornpoe/pseuds/unicornpoe
Summary: A series of oneshots all centering around John Watson and Sherlock Holmes and their relationship. Anything that springs to mind. Mostly fluff with light angst thrown in there, because we Sherlockians sure love to torture ourselves.There's no timeline. I'll take requests! REQUESTS CLOSED FOR NOW





	1. Happy Christmas, Indeed

**Author's Note:**

> Hello! Just a few things before you start reading: this is something that randomly popped into my head and refused to leave until I wrote it down. It's unedited, so I apologize for any mistakes. Please, please comment below with any thoughts/requests for future oneshots! Thanks for reading!

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John are about to spend their first Christmas together as a couple. Sherlock is being Sherlock and freaking out about his lack of a gift. Fluff happens.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, yeah, Christmas has come and gone. Enjoy this anyway! Prompts/requests welcome!

So Christmas was something that Sherlock hadn't previously considered. Considering that tomorrow was the fateful day, this was a problem.

There had been Christmases before (of course) and they'd been full of all the proper Christmas-ey things (Sherlock supposed) but this one was different now (wasn't it?) because he had John (didn't he?). John, John Watson, Dr. John Hamish Watson, Lord of Flashy Red and Green Jumpers and Those Little Stupid Antler Head-thingys That Jingle All the Bloody Time. And John... he'd _notice_ if something was wrong and, worse than that, he'd _care._

Sherlock was swiftly going back to his old way of thinking (his pre-John way of thinking) in light of this recent holiday: caring was _not_ an advantage.

There had even been Christmases with John _in them_ , before. But Sherlock and John hadn't been lovers then (had they?) and they were now (weren't they?) and everything, Sherlock was discovering, was going straight to shite.

Sherlock─who was currently wearing a hole in the floor with his circuitous pacing of the living room floor─stopped abruptly and turned sharply on his heel. He crossed to the mantle where his skull sat (a silent witness) and picked it up in one thin hand. Brought it up to eye level and considered it dolefully, head cocked to the left. The skull stared indifferently back out of empty eye sockets and was not helpful, so Sherlock (who was not exactly in charge of his physical reactions to emotional issues when not under considerable duress) decided that now would be a good time to begin screaming.

And so he did.

Not anything intelligible, no, never that. Just a steady stream of noise that was wordless but nevertheless clear. After about five seconds he (much to the appreciation of all of Baker Street) shut the hell up because his throat was beginning to ache, and also because Mrs. Hudson was pounding on the floor with her broom and yelling at him to be quite, and John was coming at him quite quickly from the bedroom with a face that was turning an alarming shade of puce.

“Christ─dammittohell─ _Sherlock─_ what─” John stopped, completely at a loss, in the middle of their floor and stared at Sherlock in a way that might have been arousing if it weren't for the murderous glint in his eye. (Oh, who was Sherlock fooling. John was arousing all the time, murderous glint or not.) (In fact, that murderous glint might have actually been _helping_ , which was probably indicative of some strange kink that they should explore...)

“Please use your words efficiently, John, or not at all,” said Sherlock, a hair more snappily than he had intended. It was just that it was _Christmas Eve,_ and it was _John,_ and he loved him _so much─_

John at last gained control of his faculties and raised his eyebrows stratospherically, along with a finger that he began waggling aggressively in his lover's face. “Don't you tell me to use my words, Mr. Let-me-just-stand-here-and-scream-the-bloody-ears-off-of-everyone-because-somehow-that's-ok-now. Apologize to Mrs. Hudson,” he said sternly, transferring the focus of that finger from Sherlock's forehead to the floor.

“John─”

“ _Apologize.”_

Sherlock sighed. “Sorry, Mrs. Hudson,” he yelled at a lower decibel.

“Yes, dear,” came her slightly muffled reply.

“Put down the skull,” John said.

Sherlock put down the skull.

John seemed to find this satisfactory, because he nodded his head sharply. Crossed his arms in front on his chest. (Wearing one of those horrendous jumpers, Sherlock saw. He regarded him with a strange mixture of fondness and disgust.)

“Now,” John said, and he seemed softer about the mouth now that the possibility of death by landlady had been out ruled. “What's got you in a strop?”

Sherlock considered saying many things, among which were that he wasn't in a strop, that he was in a strop because of a case-related something or other, or that he was hopelessly unsure about everything pertaining to how certain Consulting Detectives should treat certain Doctors who they happen to be shagging and snogging and everything in between on a regular basis on Christmas. He quickly settled for the third because the first two were lies, and John hated lies.

“I,” he began, breathing in deeply through his nose, “love you very much.”

Well. Well, _that_ hadn't been what he'd meant to say, it hadn't been what he'd meant to say _at all_ , but John was smiling _that smile_ now _,_ and uncrossing his arms, and closing the short distance between them, so he couldn't complain.

“I love you very much as well,” John said evenly. He let one of his hands drift up, almost unconsciously, and it came to rest on Sherlock's cheek. Sherlock leaned into it slightly: nuzzled until the edge of his nose was bumping the base of John's thumb, then took that hand off of his face and clasped it to his heart. John's eyes lowered briefly, took in his palm splayed flat against Sherlock's heart, both of Sherlock's hands pressed down on top of John's, and the smile grew.

“Thank you,” Sherlock said. He cleared his throat. Somehow, after almost a whole year, he still couldn't hear those words without going a bit misty.

“This is also our first Christmas as partners─well, not professional partners, but romantic partners─”

“I understand, love.”

“And as such,” Sherlock continued, “I find myself wishing to give you the absolute complete very best of Christmases that this world has ever seen ever. However...” and here he took another deep breath, and skipped his gaze away from John, across the living room, into the kitchen to rest on a microscope. He lowered his voice further. “However I have no sodding idea how on earth to go about doing that. So I find my stress levels are currently at an all time high. Hence the bellowing.”

John was quiet for an inordinate amount of time, and Sherlock found himself terrified. He shouldn't have confessed. Confessing a weakness such as that could be construed as a sign of apathy, of laziness, of a lack of devotion or love. If John thought that every single aspect of Sherlock wasn't completely in love with and devoted to him, then─

John made a soft noise (surprise, discovery, tenderness) and Sherlock snapped his eyes back to the smaller man as he whispered in a tone just this side of reverent, “Sherlock your heart's beating so fast.”

“Well...” Sherlock furrowed his brow. “Well, John. I'm with you.”

John's eyes were the ones filling with moisture now; irrational fear once more took hold of Sherlock. “John?” He asked in a panic.

“You lovely, beautiful idiot,” John breathed, and then he slid his free hand up Sherlock's arm, up, up, across shivering shoulder and an expanse of chilly, milky neck, getting caught in dark chocolate curls, tangled from hours of fingers being run through them, or hats mashing them down. Sherlock shivered, and instinctively took his John up in long, willing arms, pressing him close as the smaller man leaned up and pressed those warm lips against Sherlock's cool ones. Sherlock parted his lips after a moment; shivered again when John's skilled tongue tangled with his own; lost all sense of time as it went on, moments of close, streaked heat, a spattering of stars leaving trails upon treasured skin.

John pulled away very slowly, but only their mouths ceased to touch: heaving chests were still as close as ever, arms wrapped tightly enough to be indistinguishable as to which limb belonged to which man. “Did that put a stop to any doubts you had?”

“I─I─” Sherlock stumbled over his words (tongue still in kissing mode, not talking mode) as he searched for the right thing to say.

Luckily John (lovely, perfect, _his_ ) spared him. “ _You_ , Sherlock. You're all I need for this to be the best Christmas in all of fucking time and space. Last year was... was terrible─”

Sherlock swallowed, remembering his own Christmas last year. Playing dead in a cold, barren cell a million miles away. John, here, equally alone. Equally dead.

“─but I have you now, we have _each other_ now, and that is _all I need._ Yeah?” He raised himself up on tip-toe and rubbed Sherlock's nose with his own.

“Yeah,” Sherlock whispered. “You're all I need too, John. You are─you are─you're─”

But John silenced him with another kiss.

Happy Christmas, indeed.

 


	2. Physiology and How To Make It Interesting

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Watson teaches physiology to a bunch of under motivated uni students. Sherlock Holmes is a famous film star. They're married. No one knows. Hilarity ensues.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well look at me, churning these things out! *pats self on back* This one's for Evytju (there's probably a way to link in a persons name but I don't know it. Sorry). Thanks, m'dear, for the brilliant request! I ran with it. Hope it's everything you were looking for!

John stared blankly at the stacks of terrible essays before him and tried to imagine that he was somewhere else. Somewhere nice. Like the Bahamas. Or a tea salon. Or at home laying in his husband's lap while they watched Sherlock's latest movie that took place in the Bahamas and drinking a nice, stout cuppa. Yeah, that last option sounded the best.

He hated to admit it, but sometimes, on days such as this one─days where he was stuck in a Uni classroom for hours and hours with a bunch of kids who couldn't care less about physiology while they failed their exams─that he longed to climb up on his battered desk, raise a jubilant fist, and shout to the bunch of gits that not only did know Sherlock Holmes, but he was married to him. And they shagged, too, believe it or not. Quite often. So consider that fact, would you, the next time the notion takes you to steal all of Dr. Watson's pens and empty the ink into his tea and yes, he knows he should have noticed, but no, he doesn't care what you think, and Sheldon Whiffield, he _knows it was you you sadistic little shit─_

John frowned and slashed a liberal amount of red ink across a particularly badly worded paragraph. Honestly, did they even try? He raised his eyes and shot a brief glance out over the sea of bent heads before him. An array of furrowed brows and flat mouths and pale cheeks greeted him. Don Smith over in yonder corner looked like he was experiencing a mini heart attack. (He'd best be careful; poor bloke didn't have much hair to begin with, and tearing at it like that certainly wasn't helping anything.) Physiology wasn't the easiest of subjects, John supposed, but if they hated it so much they could just drop the class. God knows Dr. Watson had dropped a few in his day, and look where he was now. Married to an outlandishly gorgeous idiot who like to dabble in murder (the solving of, the not the committing of) when the man wasn't off filming somewhere, and stuck in a stuffy room that contained a sad lack of both brain power from it's occupants and soothing herbal liquid for it's inhabitant.

John's pocket buzzed. A few errant gazes strayed up to him but he ignored them as he withdrew his phone and read the text waiting for him.

**Come out. -SH.**

John abandoned the depressing essays and stuck his tongue between his teeth as he typed an answer through squinted eyes. (Damn letters were too small.)

**Already did. Or did you ignore the past year of me in your bed? -JW**

**You are very hard to ignore, John. Particularly in bed. In fact─**

John stopped reading. Now wasn't the time for _that_ , not in front of all of them.

**Save it for the bedroom, love. I'm teaching. -JW**

**Feeling witty today, are we? I repeat what I said before, even though you know I loathe to: come out of that classroom, John. -SH**

**Can't. Teaching. Be home in an hour. -JW**

John shook his head, and wished that annoyance was the most predominant emotion that he felt instead of fond amusement. If he was feeling completely annoyed he wouldn't have even answered that first text. But now here he was, grinning like an idiot in front of a bunch of cocky bastards and more than a little antsy to get home and get─

The phone buzzed. On reflex, John read the text:

**You leave me no choice. -SH**

_Oh, Christ,_ John thought before the door to his classroom swung open (hitting the opposite wall with a bang that startled Tommy Flenderson into throwing his pencil) and Sherlock Holmes blew in.

One thing must be understood about the great Sherlock Holmes: he's a bloody Adonis. Meters of flawless ivory skin, silken hair like curls of darkest chocolate, eyes that are no color anyone can describe and yet every color in the world, cheekbones you could cut yourself on, lips that aren't humanly possible, and an arse to die for. Another thing that must be understood about the great Sherlock Holmes: he is utterly and completely Dr. John Watson's.

So when the film star charged into the muggy classroom, yanking his dark sunglasses off and fixing the obscenely tight cut of his dark purple shirt and bellowing, “Love, I need you for murder,” at a suddenly much more interesting John Watson, well, one might understand if a few heads were turned.

There was a brief, agonizing moment of silence, wherein John and Sherlock stared at each other, and every single person in the room stared at John and Sherlock staring at each other. And then all hell broke loose.

“Sherlock Holmes!” screamed Sheldon Whiffield ( _seriously, Sheldon?_ John thought as he buried his head in his hands. _You know the name of my husband but you don't know which muscle makes your arm go._ ) For some inexplicable reason there were people standing on desks now, Mackenzie Culverton was hyperventilating as she chanted Sherlock's name over and over again, and Don Smith seemed to have decided that this was monumental enough of an event to warrant a full-fledged heart attack.

John sighed, and leaned back in his chair. He raised his eyebrows at Sherlock as he crossed to John's desk and placed both palms flat upon it, bending down slightly to speak. “Murder, John. Terribly important. Triple homicide. Need your input. Told you you should have come out.”

“He called Dr. Watson love!” Ruth something-or-other said with a hind of wonder to her blood-curdling shout.

“You couldn't have waited an hour?” John asked as he fiddled with his red pen. He was just nagging to nag, and Sherlock knew that, if the smug grin on his face was anything to go by.

“Are they _together_?” Someone asked incredulously. There was a gentle wail from Sheldon's direction. Don fainted.

“ _Triple homicide,_ John.” Sherlock leaned closer, and an errant curl drifted down to brush his milky forehead. “You can't ask a thing like that to wait. Bodies rot, you know.”

John wrinkled his nose. “How long have they been there?” Rotting bodies didn't sound exactly romantic, but when weighed against the situation he was currently in, well, there were certain advantages that dead things had over failing students.

“OhmygoddoesWatsonshaghimIbetheshagshim,” was screeched out at such a high decibel that Sherlock winced and then turned around swiftly, crossing his arms over his well-sculpted chest. He surveyed the classroom-turned-madhouse with his signature searing gaze.

“If you're hoping to calm them down you might want to use a slightly less attractive look,” John murmured half-heartedly from his chair. He was enjoying this spectacle.

“Alright. Yes, I am Sherlock Holmes. Yes, I am married to your beautiful physiology professor. Yes, I realize that I am handsome.” He hesitated as he took in the slack jawed faces of the students who were still conscious, and then spoke again. “Yes, I will take questions. One at a time.”

“Do you and Watson shag?” asked The Kid With Sideburns. (John could never remember his name.)

“Frequently,” answered Sherlock with a straight face.

“Is he any good?” Piped up Ella Rogers. “Watson, I mean.”

Sherlock smirked, and John's cheeks immediately flamed red. “Quite.”

“Do you die in your next film?” Sheldon Whiffield (idiot) asked.

Sherlock glared at him icily. “No spoilers, peasant.”

“You can't call them peasants, Sherlock,” John muttered, prodding his husband in the back with his red pen. Sherlock flicked the fingers of one hand dismissively at him without turning around and John shut up.

“Can I have your autograph?”

Sherlock tilted his head slightly to the right. “You can have my autograph when, and only when, you all pass this exam with perfect marks. If any one of you get less than perfect marks, then no autographs for anyone. Dr. Watson will give you until they next time you meet to study─won't you, John?”

John sighed. “Why not.”

“For now, class is dismissed. Also, someone help that fellow,” he said, pointing at Don.

The students filed out (some already had their nose buried in textbooks) dragging Don in their wake. John watched them go.

“Well, John,” said Sherlock, turning back to face his husband with a dazzling smile and an outstretched hand. John took it, and let himself be hauled to his feet. “If interest in physiology peaks, I trust you won't need me to explain the reason why?”

Keeping his hand in Sherlock's, John came around to the other side of the desk and pulled Sherlock down for a quick kiss. “I suppose you want me to thank you now,” he murmured, raising an eyebrow.

“Well, now that you mention it...” Sherlock trailed away suggestively.

John grinned. “Let's go look at rotting corpses.”

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thanks for reading! Any requests?


	3. Glitter Bomb

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> John Watson is a devious little bastard and Sherlock Holmes loves him for it.

"I'm going to send Mycroft a glitter bomb."

I'm not sure, at first, if this is a sentence the deigns a response. There are a total of four obvious things that I can infer from it immediately that give me conflicting thoughts:

1\. John said this firmly enough that I see no point in arguing.

2\. The words 'Mycroft' and 'bomb' in the same sentence give me unpleasant feelings against my will, almost like I care what happens to my brother which I  _don't._

3\. John would never blow somebody up (certainly not if that somebody was a somebody that I didn't loathe) and so the bomb ostensibly isn't one of the detonating kind.

4\. The words 'Mycroft' and 'glitter' in the same sentence fill me with a child-like glee that I haven't felt since last week when John let me catch a bee in his coffee cup and bring it to my room for science. (It wasn't for science. It was because I love bees. I'm ninety-three percent sure that John knows this.)

John sits down in his chair. Laptop: opened, seemingly to a page related to said glitter bombs, but I'd have to look to be sure. He's doing that thing with his face where he isn't quite smiling and his lips are pursed, and in a split second I decide that I'm interested in this conversation.

"Are you suggesting the explosion of my brother?" I ask. I raise one of my eyebrows, confident that John will not see through the falsity of this question. Of course he isn't considering that (as evidenced by option number three) but I find it sinfully fun to bait him.

"It's glitter, not black powder, and trying to blow Mycroft up would be even more stupid than whatever that thing you did with the octopus and the mustard last week was."

"I was trying to─"

"Yes, I know, the point  _is─"_ and here he looks at my from under his light eyelashes without moving his head, which for some reason I find unspeakably attractive─ "I'm not going to explode him, I'll just send him this glitter bomb─comes in a harmless looking package, he'll never know─and then he'll open it and it'll shower sparkles down all over his stately ass."

I wait a moment before answering because it seems like the appropriate thing to do, and I don't want to appear  _too_  enthusiastic lest John become suspicious. Finally I say, "What color?"

John smirks and says with declarative joy, "Fuchsia."

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts/requests welcome!


	4. In Which Sherlock and John Try To Hide Something and Aren't Successful

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock and John are together. Romantically. None of their friends know yet, and the boys would rather it stay that way. However, through a series of mishaps, the secret begins to leak... also body parts are spilled. Post series 4.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Well. This turned massive. Thanks again for the prompt, [Evytju!](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Evytju) I do hope I did it justice :D

“She was in a series of color-coded boxes all about the house. Genius, really. Took me at least an hour to find all of them. I got particularly stuck on the eyeballs, you see, Molly; they were both in an indigo box, when I had been expecting them to be in indigo and violet boxes respectively, as the arms were in boxes two different shades of red─”

“Hey,” John said, making eye contact with Sherlock across the examination table upon which the various pieces of the Body Formerly Known as Mrs. Ingram's were scattered. Their gazes locked. “Maybe don't talk about that in front of Rosie, yeah?”

Sherlock bounced Rosie lightly against his hip and she slapped her flat, open hand against his cheek with baby-strength. John felt a sudden, fierce surging of love that made him wish fervently that the three of them─Sherlock, Rosie, himself─were somewhere devoid of both Molly and the confetti that used to be Mrs. Ingram. “Well, she's seen all this, John,” Sherlock said, using his free hand to gesture at the examination table.

Rosie shrieked something that sounded vaguely like Sherlock's name and pointed exitedly in the direction that he was motioning. Sherlock grinned broadly─god, he was beautiful when he smiled like that─and said jubilantly “She enjoys gazing upon bloody remains, John! You have sired a wonderful child!”

“I...” John sighed and glanced at Molly, who was ringing her hands and looking back and forth between Sherlock and Rosie and John, then shoved his hands into his pockets. “Yes. She's wonderful.”

“So what piece of her did you need to look at?” Molly asked. Inevitably, her gaze caught on the cutest person in the room, and she smiled accordingly. Rosie squealed.

“Oh, nothing specifically. It's just that John wasn't there on this particular case, and I knew he'd be interested in looking at such brilliant─” he broke off when both John and Molly shot him glances that very clearly said 'not good.' “Sorry, _innovative_ handiwork.”

“Oh.” Molly said. “Well. Enjoy the look, then. Coffee?” She asked, opening the door and hanging her head back in.

“Black, two sugars.”

John smiled. “None for me, thanks.”

Molly nodded and shut the door behind her with a soft _snick._

As soon as she'd gone, John marched himself briskly around the examination table, slid an arm around Sherlock's slim waist, and planted a kiss on the taller man's cheek. John had to reach up a bit on tip toe to do it, but the action didn't annoy him as much as he'd thought it would. There was something almost endearing about the whole ritual; the way Sherlock would bend his reedy body slightly, meeting John halfway so that neither of them had to strain for kisses. Or maybe endearing wasn't quite the right word, if John was being honest. _Contented_ , was a better one.

Sherlock's cheeks pinked─something John knew he would never get tired of seeing as long as he lived. Something John knew he would never get tired of _causing─_ and he worked admirably hard to hide the smile spreading across his face by planting his nose in Rosie's mess of blond curls.

“You mustn't,” Sherlock muttered.

“I mustn't?”

“ _Molly_ , John.”

“She isn't in here, love,” John said, going back in for more. He aimed for the lips this time and missed, landing on the tip of his lover's nose and making Rosie giggle from her high perch. Sherlock pulled his head back sharply, cheeks a lovely shade of scarlet now that did wonders to compliment his cerulean eyes, and his mouth slid into a perfectly round O. John grinned, leaned in again, caught the lips this time─ _oh, what perfection, what bliss_ ─

“Got you tea, John, even though─oh. Oh my goodness.”

Sherlock and John jumped about fifty feet away from each other as soon as Molly began speaking which, John realized mid flight, was probably rather telling in and of itself. He stumbled backwards, and his hip slammed sharply into the corner of the examination table, sending the table toppling and sending bits and pieces of Mrs. Ingram all over the pristine morgue linoleum. An eyeball rolled, and Sherlock, Rosie, and John tracked it's journey with doleful gazes as it came to a gentle halt against the toe of Molly's sensible brown laceups.

“I'm so sorry Molly, god, I didn't mean to─” John crouched, reached for a slice of arm, and then paused there as he realized that picking pieces of dead woman up off of a morgue's floor was not at all what he had expected to be doing on this fine Wednesday morning.

“No, stop, please,” Molly said, setting the cups she was carrying down on the counter and hurrying over to a box of blue rubber gloves. “I'll have to get that─wouldn't be good for you to touch her─but thank you anyway.”

John stood. “I'm so sorry again,” he insisted, grabbing Sherlock by the elbow and towing him and Rosie towards the door. Molly was dithering, and when Molly dithered, that meant that Molly wanted to be alone.

Also, he was fairly sure that she had just witnessed that kiss. And while Molly was no Sherlock in terms of brains, she wasn't an Anderson either.

This was not good.

* * *

 

Sherlock stared, brow furrowed, down at the body of a young man crumpled into an awkward tangle on the floor of a dilapidated apartment building. The man─boy, really─had a tangle of red hair, matted in the back with a liberal coating of dark, coagulated blood, and his arms were folded awkwardly under his chest. Sherlock glanced to the right and his eyes met John's.

“Opinion?” Sherlock said, but it sounded like he meant to say _I love my job. And you._

John cleared his throat, clasped his hands behind his back, and rocked back on his heels, all in an effort to look helpful to Lestrade as he offered these extremely obvious facts: “Bashed in the head with something heavy. Probably that hammer right there, judging by the blood on it,” he answered, but it sounded like he meant to say, _I love my job, and I love you too._

Sherlock nodded, still grave. “Thank you, John, for your continued sharing of invaluable facts.”

Out of the corner of John's eye, he saw Lestrade raise his eyebrows high enough that they almost met his hairline.

John smiled, and resisted the urge to grip Sherlock's hand with his own. _You're in public,_ he reminded himself. _You don't want to draw attention to this. And, more importantly, neither does Sherlock._ But while John was a strong man, there wasn't a person on earth strong enough to resist the temptation of staring at Sherlock, and so stare he did.

He admired the copious dark brown curls. (He'd asked, once, if they were natural or if Sherlock slept in curlers: Sherlock hadn't spoken to him for a whole week.) He let his gaze linger on that perfect, light pink mouth, the edges turned down in concentration, full bottom lip sticking out in a slight pout... John was possessed with the sudden, enormous, and overwhelmingly complete urge to take that full bottom lip between his teeth and─

_No,_ he told himself, more sternly than before. _You can look, but you can't think._

John slid his eyes down his lover's creamy neck, across his beautifully sculpted chest─unfortunately hidden under several layers of winter wear that John wished to rip off of the man. His smile broadened when Sherlock extended a hand and grasped John's tightly in his own without looking at him.

_His fingers are cold,_ John thought, and so he lifted the long digits up to his own mouth and breathed on them, a gently _whoosh_ of air that sent an involuntary shiver through Sherlock. John laughed a little when Sherlock still didn't look away from the body, and then kissed the center of Sherlock's palm, slowly and languidly until Sherlock's face flamed again and he turned smoldering eyes towards John─

“ _Bloody. Hell.”_

They jumped again, the both of them. (Pieces of corpse didn't fly everywhere this time, though, which was lovely.) They faced Lestrade like two guilty children caught with their hands in the cookie jar. Or, as it were, in each others' mouths.

“Experiment,” Sherlock blurted. His eyes were extremely wide.

Lestrade held up a hand. He was grinning and looking between the two of them like a proud parent, which was fucking terrible. “I don't care what you two get up to─”

“I asked John to perform a simple experiment wherein, whenever I appear stuck on a case, he will grasp my hand like so─” Sherlock lifted their still intertwined hands and Lestrade raised an eyebrow. “─and, if that doesn't work, he is to, um...”

“To breathe on him and kiss him,” John provided, feeling his own face flame as he said the words. It was one thing to commit the action in silence; it was quite another to say it out loud.

“Yes. Exactly. To... breathe on me and to kiss me.” Sherlock swallowed, shook his head slightly, and glared at Lestrade when his chuckle ascended to a laugh. “And it worked, Detective Inspector.” He turned, yanking John behind him. ( _Arse,_ John thought warmly.) “Ask the tailor what happened to young Paul here. It involves a turtle,” he yelled over his shouler.

“Enjoy your shag tonight!” Lestrade shouted back.

“Fuck,” said John.

“Indeed,” said Sherlock.

* * *

 

Mrs. Hudson, it appeared, was the most difficult of everyone to hide from.

The woman was more than her comfortable exterior belied (John had found out that much months ago with that whole incident with the sports car and the Beethoven and a handcuffed Sherlock shoved in a trunk) but this was going beyond hidden life as the leader of a drug cartel and edging into hidden life as a secret agent. _Which,_ John thought, _going off of my history of acquaintances, would hardly be unlikely._

Every single time Sherlock or John hinted at something even slightly romantic, the woman would appear. Sometimes to bring them tea just fifteen minutes after she'd been up with the last pot, sometimes to whisk Rosie away for a bit of 'light bonding' and once, improbably, because she'd 'thought she'd heard a funny noise and thought it might be robbers.' (John had had to literally sit on top of Sherlock to keep him from yelling that, 'no it hadn't been robbers, it had been John and me having a shag which you likely knew and very rudely interrupted anyway.')

All of this explained why, three days after the Lestrade Incident and four after the Molly Incident (as John had taken to calling them in his head) they were tiptoeing about the flat like a pair of guilty teenagers.

John was sitting in his chair, legs crossed at the knee. Rosie slept peacefully in her crib next to the couch, Sherlock lounged upside down in his chair as he watched John read the paper, and none of them were making any noise for fear of Mrs. Hudson descending from the ceiling.

“You know,” Sherlock said softly, drawing John's eyes away from an article about penguins and up to his inverted partner. Sherlock's hair was hanging down from his scalp and brushing the floor, and his face was rapidly turning red as the blood rushed to the other end of his body. His bare toes wiggled in the air, and the strings of his dressing gown caught in his mouth. “We should just be glad that Mycroft isn't here. He'd be onto us in an instant.”

John shuddered at the thought. Mycroft, with his pointy sneer and his overzealous umbrella. What a nightmare. “Mm. If he ever finds out, he'll make our lives a living hell.”

“Finds out what?” Mrs. Hudson chirped, poking her head around the edge of the door frame with a wide smile and a cheery wave.

“Good lord, woman!” Sherlock exclaimed. He swung his legs around one way and his body around the other, and adjusted himself vertically in his chair. “What do you need this time?”

She stepped fully into the room, heels clacking, and John raised his eyebrows when he saw that she wasn't even carrying anything.

“Oh, nothing!” She said brightly, beaming benevolently at the both of them.

Sherlock tilted his head and gave her a suspicious look that very clearly said 'I know what you're up to, I just don't know how to stop you.' “You aren't even pretending anymore,” he said huffily.

“Oh, no, dear,” Mrs. Hudson agreed. She toddled over to Rosie's crib and smiled down at the sleeping girl. “Have you told Rosie yet?”

“Jesus Christ,” John swore roundly at the same time that Sherlock leaped up and began herding Mrs. Hudson out of the flat with much flapping of billowing sleeves and exclamations of “Privacy! You are invading our _privacy_!”

Rosie awoke with a startled cry at the banging on the steps. John folded his newspaper and stood with a groan, crossing to the crib and retrieving his daughter. Sherlock reappeared at the top of the steps─looking rather worse for the wear, John noticed, wondering just how intense the scuffle with their landlady had been─and placed his hands on his hips.

“John,” he said firmly, panting a little. “We have to tell them.”

John sighed.

* * *

 

“We have gathered you here today,” Sherlock intoned solemnly, “So that John and I may share with you a piece of information that is of the utmost importance to the both of us.”

John and Sherlock were standing in the middle of Mrs. Hudson's living room. Molly, Lestrade, Mrs. Hudson, and Rosie─sitting amiably on Lestrade's lap─were squished, side by side, on Mrs. Hudson's couch, hip-to-hip and shoulder-to-shouler. Out of the three of them, John observed perhaps a bit dourly, Molly looked the least smug, but even _she_ was grinning slightly. (It occurred to John how very, extremely glad he was that Molly's crush on Sherlock had dissipated some time after Eurus. This conversation would be a damn sight more awkward if she still fancied herself in love with him.)

“Go on, then,” Lestrade grinned broadly and jogged Rosie up and down on his leg. “Tell us.”

“I'm sure we'll all be very surprised,” said Mrs. Hudson kindly.

“Like hell you will,” John said.

“It is far too late for your false kindness, Mrs. Hudson,” Sherlock said a bit snappily.

“I might be,” Molly added mildly. “Surprised, I mean.”

“You won't,” Sherlock barked. “Well. Here we go. John and I are... are...” He paused, and turned to John, his mouth parted slightly. “I didn't rehearse this bit,” he said helplessly.

“That's fine,” John said, taking Sherlock's hand in his own. “I did.” He squared his shoulders and set his jaw and faced their friends and their daughter with firm, military resolve. “Sherlock and I are in a relationship. A romantic one.”

“Oh, I knew it!” Mrs. Hudson exclaimed. She clapped her hands in from of her chest and jumped up off of the couch. “I've been saying it from day one that you two belong together, haven't I, John? She grabbed Sherlock's arm and John's and gave them both a motherly squeeze. “I knew you'd do it some day. You just needed a push. This calls for tea!” She said, and bustled to the kitchen.

“Well, no, I'm not surprised. You were right,” Lestrade said. He was smiling broadly. “I'm happy for you, of course, but mostly for myself, because now I don't have to put up with all of those pining looks from you two at crime scenes.”

“I have never once pined in the whole course of my life,” Sherlock said vehemently.

“Oh, yes you have,” the other occupants of the room chorused.

Sherlock huffed, then turned his eyes to Molly. “How about you, Molly?” He asked. “Happy? Sad? Indifferent?”

“It's perfect,” Molly said with a smile. “I feel like everything's finally right now. Lord, it took you two long enough, didn't it?”

Sherlock shot a sidelong glance at John, which John caught and returned with a glare of his own. “John's fault,” Sherlock stated. “I would've had him in the middle of Angelo's if I'd thought he would have let me.”

“You said you were 'married to your work' or some shite,” John insisted for what was probably the thousandth time since they'd gotten together. “How the hell was I supposed to know you didn't mean it?”

From the kitchen Mrs. Hudson called, “I suppose things are different between you two now? The way you act around each other?”

John lifted Rosie off of Lestrade's lap (Lestrade made a sad face that set Rosie into a fit of giggles) and set her on his hip. “Not really,” he confessed. “We have the same routine. We have the same jobs. Sherlock's been taking care of Rosie just as much as I have since I moved back in to Baker Street, and he continues to.”

Sherlock slid his arm around John's waist, and John smiled. “Only difference is that now we shag. Quite a lot.”

“ _Sherlock_ ,” John hissed, as Molly's face turned red, Lestrade pretended to throw up on the floor, and Mrs. Hudson made loud catcalls from the kitchen.

“Well we do!” Sherlock insisted. “And I, for one, don't think we should keep those details from our friends.”

“There are some things that should stay secrets,” Molly insisted.

“Fine,” Sherlock muttered. He leaned in so just John could hear and murmured, “But you're very good.”

“I know love,” John whispered back with a broad smile on his face. He thought of what Molly had said. Perfect. Yes. That was the word. “So are you.”

 

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Requests/prompts would be lovely!


	5. Doing Fine

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sherlock helps Rosie down the stairs with great anxiety, and John does something that isn't quite good enough but is a start.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So I recently re-read Alone on the Water and now I'm in such a weepy mood that I think everything I write is going to by angst with a capital A for a little bit. (Seriously, if you're in the mood to have your soul crushed, go read that fic.) Luckily, I wrote this before the doldrums set it. Enjoy!

Sherlock stood at the bottom of the flight of steps leading from 221A to 221B with his heart in his throat.

Terror wasn't a new feeling for Sherlock Holmes. He'd been shot at. He'd been  _shot._  He'd seen his best friend with bombs strapped to his chest. He'd been dangled by his ankles over the Thames by a heroin dealer who was high as a kite, locked in a tiny meat freezer for six hours and pushed down a hill while the key was flushed down someone's loo, thrown himself off of a building, been tortured by countless nameless lackeys of the most evil man he knew, and watched while his brother and the love of his life were threatened by his psychopathic sister, and yet all of that paled in comparison to the sheer terror that he was feeling now.

Rosie Watson was walking down the stairs.

This wouldn't have been so bad if the little girl's father were here to help with her descent. (Or, more accurately, to enforce the help of her descent, as every time Sherlock stepped closer than three feet to Rosie she began to shriek that she was "A big girl!" and kick her stubby legs wildly at him.) But John was not here, John was at Molly's birthday party where Sherlock and Rosie needed to be, and had no idea of the form of hell his best friend was currently going through.

"Carefully now, love," Sherlock murmured. He was standing stock-still at the base of the steps. Hands: clasped shakily together behind back, head: tilted up a little as he watched young Watson, feet: planted firmly, but not so firmly that he couldn't dart forward and perform a daring rescue if need be. "Take your time."

Rosie turned those big blue eyes upon him─so like her father's were those eyes, expressive and clear and beautiful─and gave him a grin. And even though his heart was doing a fair job of beating its way out of his chest, he found himself grinning lightly back. It seemed that every Watson he would ever know somehow possessed the ability to work this strange magic over him. This magic that kept him pulled inexorably toward them and filled him with a warm, happy glow. "Papa," said Rosie, and she reached one chubby hand out toward him, opening and closing her fingers in a grabby motion.

"Would you like help?" Sherlock asked, preparing himself to take the child's hand, but just then Rosie extended a stocky leg forward and the rest of her tiny (precious) body went with it and Sherlock was running, faster than he had ever run before, nothing in his crowded mind but to protect his Rosie (his tiny, perfect, completely lovable Watson, his miniature John and Mary) to save her, to keep her safe, to snatch her out of thin air before she tumbled all the way down─

And then that minuscule, red-booted foot was planted firmly on the next step, both tiny hands were gripping the wooden railing, and she was looking out at him from under raised eyebrows (must have learned that particular expression from her Daddy) as he face-planted the wall, one arm thrown up over his head, and breathed deeply.

He closed his eyes for 0.7 seconds and bit his lips tightly. Then he was standing straight as an arrow once more at the first sound of Rosie's tentative "Papa?"

"Here. Yes. Good job, my love. Wonderful... wonderful walking. Exemplary," he babbled as his eyes roved over every last inch of her, checking to be sure, to be  _very sure_ , that not a piece of her had been harmed during the almost-fall. If she had been hurt─if she was  _ever_  hurt─in the presence of Sherlock, then he would never forgive himself. He had already broken his vow to the Watsons once when Mary took that bullet for him, and almost done many times since then when he and John were on a particularly dangerous case. However he was  _never_  going break it where Rosie was concerned. He would walk through hell or high water for her  _and_  her father rather than see either of them harmed physically, mentally, emotionally or even metaphorically.

"She's fine, Sherlock. You're both doing fine."

A warm voice. Gentle. Caressing Sherlock's back and slinking through to his core which it filled with something warm and golden. John. Instead of turning around (like he wanted to) Sherlock kept his gaze fixed on Rosie as she descended the rest of the wooden steps with toddling grace, small pink tongue sticking out of the corner of her mouth. When she reached the bottom, she smiled so widely that Sherlock was sure her face would split in two and put her hands firmly on her hips in an authoritarian stance. She knew who was the boss in this family.

Sherlock, smiling warmly in answer, scooped her up easily. "Lovely job, Rosie," he murmured into the top of her soft, golden, vanilla-scented head. She wriggled against his chest and yelled, "Daddy!" over his shoulder.

He finally turned, and looked steadily at John.

Doctor Watson was leaning in the doorway, one shoulder rutted up against the wooden frame, arms crossed against his jumper-clad chest, and smiling. Not a huge, oh-my-god-I'm-so-fucking-ecstatic smile, but something smaller, quieter, more about the eyes, and infinitely more valued by Sherlock than any other expression John could wear. Sherlock was never sure if he wanted to laugh or cry when John looked at him like that. So he just stood, and stared, and squeezed Rosie when she shifted about in his arms so that she could see her daddy as well.

"You're both doing fine," John repeated again. "I..." he trailed off, and seemed to get slightly quizzical. His brow furrowed a tiny bit (but his smile didn't dim) and he crossed the small space to where Sherlock and his daughter stood, laying one hand on Rosie's soft tummy and one (intrinsically) on Sherlock's (left) shoulder. Then he bent close and kissed Rosie softly on the cheek, eliciting a soft giggle (and he was so close that Sherlock felt the top of his ashy head brush Sherlock's chin lightly, making him shudder almost as much as the hand on his shoulder).

"Why aren't you at Molly's?" It was a random, unimportant, dreadfully  _dull_  thing to say, but those three things seemed to be the main adjectives describing anything Sherlock said after John had done something to make him feel...  _like this._ Which was the vast majority of time.

"Wanted to be here," said John, still with that same soft smile. And then Sherlock's heart began racing again for the second time in about as many minutes because John was leaning toward  _him_ , now, and then his lips were ghosting lightly, gently, warmly across Sherlock's cheek─

And then he was gone, out the door, and calling back over his shoulder to hurry up or they'd be late, and did Sherlock remember Molly's gift (yes) and if Rosie had a change of clothing in the bag (yes).

And Sherlock? Well. Sherlock smiled. Yes. They were  _all_  doing just fine.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Prompts/requests welcome!


	6. Neon

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Honestly they should have thrown it out. They should have thrown it out as soon as─well. Well, they didn't.

Honestly, they should have thrown it out. They should have thrown it out as soon as─well. Well, they didn't.

***Time the First**

John Watson liked to think of himself as a practical man. Straight-forward, level-headed, and various other synonyms for the word. Of course he was wrong, and that fact was proven to him one Tuesday evening.

For John Watson, retired army doctor, father of a nine-month-old super-baby, lover of a thirty-five-year-old consulting detective, over user of hyphens, and general saint had emphatically not expected to come home after a double shift at the clinic only to be met with the sight of said detective _smearing fucking baby poop on the bottom of the fucking kettle._

John was possessed with more of a sense of helplessness than one of rage as he quite simply dropped to his knees there in the doorway and put his head in his hands. Then, rightfully, the rage swam up, and he managed to shout-whisper (Rosie was asleep in her in her crib, for once) “What the _ever-loving-hell_ are you _doing_?”

“Oh, John,” said Sherlock pleasantly. John peered up at him from between fingers and fairly shook as his love rubbed at the kettle with a clearly soiled diaper. “I missed you.”

And it was that─that right there. That candor, that soft smile, those elegantly truthful words─that let John Watson climb to his feet, let him forget about his fury, let him cross to Sherlock Holmes and not throttle him.

“So you decided to do experiments on our daughter's shit,” John stated, silently encouraging Sherlock with a few pointed glances (that he did not pick up on) to throw the whole mess in the bin.

Sherlock's smile slid from soft to dazzling in about point three seconds as he looked up at John. “Did you know that Rosie's stool, after she's eaten that off-brand squash stuff from Tesco, turns _orange_ , John? I have to test─”

John held up a staying hand. He made the mistake of letting his gaze drift down to the experiment, gagged, and backed up a few steps. “Sherlock. You know that I love you.”

“Yes.” Sherlock considerately sat down both the diaper and the kettle in order to more fully devote his attention to what he thought was going to be something poignant and sweet. (“You left your shit-covered gloves on, Sherlock,” John would say much, much later. “I love you, but I can love you from afar.” To which Sherlock responded that John couldn't at all love him from afar, that they'd tried that and it'd been awful, and continued on in that vein until all conversation divulged into... much more engaging pastimes.) “As I love you.”

“Then please, in the name of that love─stop talking about stool, orange or otherwise, and throw all of this in the bin. The one outside. Or better yet, bury it somewhere. And then buy me a new kettle.”

Sherlock blinked up at him and pushed that plush bottom lip out so that John almost─almost, _almost_ ─relented. But Dr. Watson stiffened his spine, raised his eyebrows, stood his ground─

Sherlock buried it all deep in the bank of the Thames. Then he bought John a new kettle.

***Time the Second**

Rosamund Watson was, as has been said before, a super-baby. She was, in the not-so-humble opinion of her doting daddies, the smartest, most beautiful, and generally most absolutely perfect child that had ever been, possessing only one, glaring fault: her absolute refusal to sleep at normal times. She would doze blissfully through raucous conversations at the Met, snooze like the dead while strapped to the chest of a consulting detective on the noisy tube─but take her home and lay her down any time after the sun had set, and you were in for a rough time.

Which is why John was currently pacing in (increasingly weary) circles all 'round the sitting room, murmuring little bars of tuneless nothings and contemplating ripping out his own hair as he held a wailing Rosie to his chest. She'd been screaming for the past half hour (“Well with a voice like that, she'll never get mugged, John.” “Yes, thank you Sherlock.”) and been conscious for the past twelve and John was _melting on his bloody feet._

“I'll take her for a while,” Sherlock offered from his position on the couch. He was lounging in a defeated posture, head tipped back, eyes half closed, arms spread wide, clearly felled by the vocal... er, _prowess_ of tiny Watson. Nevertheless he unfolded his long limbs (his hair was sticking up wildly in all it's fluffy, curly glory, and all John wanted to do was bury his hands in that hair and lay down in their bed and _go the fuck to sleep)_ and crossed to his love, sliding his big hands expertly around the small bundle of caterwauling perfection.

“Here,” John said, full volume because how the hell else was he supposed to be heard over all of this, and draped the flannel he'd been using to protect his shirt from spit-up and other unpleasantness over Sherlock's cotton-clad shoulder.

Sherlock smiled that little, v-shaped smile at John as he adjusted Rosie on his shoulder. John sighed from the bottom of his feet to the top of his skull (which, admittedly, was not a very long way) and settled his hand against Sherlock's smooth cheek, stroking his thumb gently along the top of one of those delicate cheekbones. “Thank you, love,” he said, softer now, even though Rosie─who clearly thought she was a police siren─continued bellowing.

“Get some sleep, John,” Sherlock answered.

And, throwing himself down on the couch, John did...

...and was awoken by blissful silence.

For about two seconds he let himself lay there, enjoying the rare calm before he sprang off of the couch fast enough to hear something crack in his hip and stood in the middle of the sitting room, looking wildly around. 221B was never _calm,_ had never _been_ calm, and never _would_ be calm unless every last inhabitant in it had died─

“John, come over here, this is fascinating.”

Sherlock was standing at the kitchen table. He held a scalpel in one hand (where had he gotten that? John thought he'd thrown all of those out last May when that nest of vipers had... never mind) and a pipette full of something of a faintly orange color in the other, and was staring down in obvious enthrallment at something hidden behind a loaf of bread.

“Rosie?” John asked, quickly getting over his momentary panic as he made his way over to Sherlock. Quickly getting rid of panic, John had discovered somewhere about the time he'd laid eyes on a pink-clad dead woman all those years ago, was a necessary skill to have if one was to run about after Sherlock Holmes.

“Fell asleep twenty two minutes after you did. She's upstairs, but I have the monitor right here,” he answered, waving vaguely at the counter with the scalpel.

“And you?” John continued, leaning one hip against the table. He gazed upon Sherlock appreciatively. Morning light did wonders for the already beautiful being, and John reveled in that fact.

Sherlock finally looked up. “Me?”

“Did you go to sleep last night?”

Sherlock blinked slowly. “Nooooo,” he hedged carefully, for he knew that he needed to be cautious when discussing this subject. “But what I _did_ do, John, was discover something so fantabulous─”

“Fantabulous?” John echoed.

“─that _even you_ will be forced to stop and marvel over it and that something─” here Sherlock dropped the scalpel and hefted both the pipette of orange nastiness and the heretofore hidden object (flannel. It was that Goddamned vomit covered flannel and _oh my god_ ) toward the ceiling triumphantly.

“SHERLOCK─” John began yelling, realized that that was unwise as there was still a snoozing child somewhere in this flat, and lowered his voice─ “Sherlock. Sherlock, my love, my dear, _no._ _Please_ no. No, no, nononononononono. No.”

“John I'm extremely disappointed in you,” Sherlock said sternly. His outstretched hands lowered slightly. “You have obviously failed to observe that this squash stuff is some of the most tenaciously neon food I've ever had the pleasure of coming in contact with. It's withstood the test of excrement and now upchuck, and I can't rest until I see what else─”

“Yes,” said John through gritted teeth. “You can.”

Sherlock found that, in fact, he could.

***Time the Third**

Sometimes John becomes involved whether he wants to be involved or not. Sometimes John becomes involved whether _Sherlock_ wants him to be involved or not.

This happened when Rosie began turning orange.

She'd been sitting on the floor between Sherlock's chair and John's, gurgling merrily as she did unspeakable things to Byron the Bee. John had been watching her absently as he sipped at his tea, his mind half on his daughter and half on Sherlock, who was somehow managing to look sexy even upside down in his chair, when...

John squinted. Blinked. Squinted some more, and sat his tea down on the floor with a thunk.

“Sherlock,” he said.

“John,” Sherlock answered.

“Sherlock, is our child... orange?”

This got the long man's attention, for he swung his legs around and was crouching next to Rosie in the course of another one of John's blinks. He prodded her carefully in the cheek (she ignored him blithely and gnawed on one of Byron the Bee's wings) and sat back on his bum. Hard.

“She _is_ ,” John breathed. He slid out of his chair as well, took a seat next to his daughter and his lover, joined the latter in poking at the former. “Oh my god, Sherlock, it's that squash stuff, it's turning her _orange_.”

Sherlock, for his part, appeared so delighted that he couldn't even speak. He simply gesticulated with those long limbs, made bizarre (sexy─why sexy? What about that was sexy? John would never know─) little panting noises, and then picked Rosie up and swung her high above his head so that Byron the Bee fell down and smacked him on the nose.

John, feeling a strange, uncomfortable mixture of turned on, weirdly delighted, and largely horrified laughed breathlessly as Sherlock kissed Rosie noisily on the cheek, and said, “We have to throw it out.”

“Oh, absolutely,” Sherlock agreed (rare) toppling to his back and letting Rosie sit on his chest. “Definitely. Mustn't have an orange baby.” Byron the Bee, forgotten, was squished underneath the detective's back.

John smiled at his two loves. “...Would you like to experiment on it first?”

Sherlock sat up fast and clutched Rosie to his chest. She shrieked a laugh. “JOHN. JOHN I LOVE YOU SO, SO MUCH I LOVE YOU.”

He meant yes.

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you, [AtlinMerrick](https://archiveofourown.org/users/AtlinMerrick) for this wonderful prompt! I hope this was close to what you were looking for. P.S. [Here's Byron the Bee.](https://www.etsy.com/listing/193653065/big-bumble-bee-plush-made-to-order?ga_order=most_relevant&ga_search_type=all&ga_view_type=gallery&ga_search_query=bee%20plush&ref=sr_gallery-1-4) Prompts/requests welcome!


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